While we know our northern friends may not feel it, in the South, Spring is
here. So we thought we'd share a few of our gardening sites appropriate
for this time of the year. Along with gardening, there's grilling, and getting
ready to diet so that you can fit back into that bathing suit this summer!
Neutral. An important confederation
of Iroquoian tribes living in the 17th century north of Lake Erie in
Ontario, having four villages east of Niagara river on territory extending
to the Genesee watershed; the western bounds of these tribes were
indefinitely west of Detroit river and Lake St Clair. They were called
Neutrals by the French because they were neutral in the known wars between
the Iroquois and the
Hurons. The Hurons called them Attiwandaronk,
denoting 'they are those whose language is awry' and this name was also
applied by the Neutrals in turn to the Hurons. The Iroquois called them
Atirhagenrat (Atirhaguenrek) and Rhagenratka. The Aondironon, the
Wenrehronon, and the Ongniaahraronon are names of some of the constituent
tribes of the Neutrals. Champlain, reporting what he saw in 1610, wrote
that the "Nation Neutre" had 4,000 warriors and inhabited a country that
extended 80 or 100 leagues east and west, situated westward front the lake
of the Seneca; they aided the
Ottawa (Cheneux releuez) against the
Mascoutens or "Small Prairie people," and raised a great quantity of good
tobacco, the surplus of which was traded for skins, furs, and porcupine
quills and quillwork with the northern Algonquian peoples. This writer
said that the Indians cleared the land "with great pains, though they had
no proper instruments to do this. They trimmed all the limbs from the
trees, which they burned at the foot of the trees to cause them to die.
Then they thoroughly prepared the ground between the trees and planted
their grain from step to step, putting in each hill about 10 grains, and
so continued planting until they had enough for 3 or 4 years provisions,
lest a bad year, sterile and fruitless, befall them".
The Rev. Father Joseph de la Roche Daillon, a
Recollect, spent the winter of 1626 among this people for the purpose of
teaching them Christianity. The first, village, Kandoucho, or All Saints,
welcomed him. He then went through four other villages, meeting with a
friendly reception, and finally reached the sixth, where he had been told
to establish himself. He had the villagers call a council of the tribe for
the purpose of declaring to them his mission. He was adopted by the tribe,
being given to Tsohahissen (Souharissen?), the presiding chief. Daillon
says of the Neutrals: "They are inviolable observers of what they have
once concluded and decreed." His "father and host," Tsohahissen, had ever
traveled among all neighboring tribes, for he was chief not only of his
own village, but even of those of the whole tribe, composed of about 28
villages, villas, and towns, constructed like those of the Hurons, besides
many hamlets of 7 or 8 lodges for fishing, hunting, or for the cultivation
of the soil. Daillon said that there was then no known instance of a chief
so absolute; that Tsohahissen had acquired his position and power by his
courage and from having been at war many times against 17 tribes, and had
brought back heads (scalps?) and prisoners from all. Their arms were only
the war club and the bow and arrow, but they were skilful in their use.
Daillon also remarked that he had not found in all the countries visited
by him among the Indians a hunchback, one-eyed, or deformed person.
But the Hurons, having learned that ather Daillon
contemplated conducting the Neutrals to the trading place in the harbor of
C. Victory in Lake St Peter of St Lawrence river, approximately 50 miles
below Montreal, spread false reports about him, declaring to the Neutrals
that he was a great magician, capable of filling the air of the country
with pestilence, and that he had then already taken off many Hurons by
poison, thus seeking to compass his death by fomenting suspicions against
him. The bearing of the accusation may be judged when it is known that
sorcerers were regarded as public enemies and outlaws and were
remorselessly slain on the slightest pretext.
The father declared that there were an incredible
number of deer in the country, which they did not take one by one; but by
making a triangular "drive," composed of two convergent hedges leading to
a narrow opening, with a third hedge placed athwart the opening but
admitting of egress at each end of the last one, they drove the game into
this pen and slaughtered them with case. They practiced toward all animals
the policy that, whether required or not, they must kill all they might
find, lest those which were not taken would tell the other beasts that,
they themselves had been pursued, and that these latter in time of need
would not permit themselves to be taken. There were also many elk, beaver,
wildcats, black squirrels, bustards, turkeys, cranes, bitterns, and other
birds and animals, most of which were there all winter; the rivers and
lakes were abundantly supplied with fish, and the land produced good
maize, much more than the people required; there were also squashes,
beans, and other vegetables in season. They made oil from tile seeds of
the sunflower, which the girls reduced to meal and then placed in boiling
water which caused the oil to float; it was then skimmed with wooden
spoons. The mush was afterward made into cakes and formed a very palatable
food.
Daillon said that tile life of the Neutrals was "not
less indecent" than that of the Hurons, and that their customs and manners
were very much the same. Like those of the Hurons, the lodges of the
Neutrals were formed like arbors or bowers, covered with the bark of
trees, 25 to 30 fathoms long and 6 to 8 in breadth, and had a passage
running through the middle, 10 or 12 ft wide, from one end to the other.
Along the sides was a kind of shelf, 4 ft from the ground, whereon the
occupants lay in summer to avoid the fleas. In winter they lay on mats on
the ground near the fire. Such a lodge contained about 12 fires and 24
firesides. Like the Hurons they removed their villages every 5, 10, 15, or
20 years, from 1 to 3 or more leagues, when the land became exhausted by
cultivation; for as they did not make use of manure to any great degree,
they had to clear more new and fertile land elsewhere. Their garments were
made from the skins of various wild beasts obtained by the chase or
through trade with the Algonkin, Nipissing, and other hunting tribes, for
maize, meal, wampum, and fishing tackle.
The Seneca attacked and destroyed a town of the
Aondironon in 1647. This seemingly unprovoked invasion was undertaken to
avenge the capture among the Aondironon by the Hurons and the subsequent
death of a Seneca warrior who had been among the Tionontati for tile
purpose of committing murder. This seeming rupture of the traditional
neutrality existing between the Iroquois and the Neutrals caused the
latter to prepare for war, and for a time both sides were on the alert and
stood defiant. Finally tile Neutrals decided to attempt to recover their
captives by some peaceable means, and to await a more favorable
opportunity to avenge themselves for this loss. But the sudden and
complete destruction of the political integrity of the Hurons by their
several defeats in 1648-49 by the Iroquois caused the Neutrals now to fear
the rising power of the Iroquois tribes, and they vainly sought to gain
their good will by committing an act of hostility against their
unfortunate Huron neighbors. When the Iroquois had sacked the most
strongly palisaded towns of the Hurons, the Huron fugitives sought asylum
in all directions, and many of them, placing their trust in the
longstanding neutrality existing between the Iroquois and the Neutrals,
which neither had yet sought to rupture, fled to the Neutral towns for
refuge; but instead of affording them protection, the Neutrals seized them
as prisoners, and also that portion of the Hurons still remaining in their
own country, and led them into captivity (Jes. Rel. 1654-60).
Immediately after the political destruction of the
Hurons by the Iroquois the latter again attacked the Neutrals. The entire
conquest of the Neutrals in 1650-51 was the result of this war, and some
remnants of the Neutral tribes were incorporated chiefly with the Seneca
villages in New York.
The Neutrals were visited in 1640-41 by Fathers Brebeuf
and Chaumonot. The tribe was then engaged in vigorous war against the
western tribes, especially the Mascoutens. These two missionaries visited
18 villages or towns, stopping in 10 of them and expounding their own
religious faith whenever they could assemble an audience. In these 10
settlements they estimated about 500 fires and 3,000 persons. On their
return journey the fathers remained at Teotongniaton, situated midway
between the chief town, Ounontisaston, and the town nearest the Huron
country, Kandoucho, where they were compelled to remain on account of
snow. While, there their hostess was at great pains to shield them front
the abuse to which they were constantly subjected; she also aided then to
learn the language and to harmonize it with that of these Neutrals. The
Awenrehronon, who had formerly lived eastward of the Erie or Panther
tribe, took refuge in Khioetoa, or St Michel, a few years before this
visit of the two fathers, and they were disposed to listen to the
teachings of the missionaries.
As a sign of mourning for their friends and kin the
Neutrals customarily blackened not only their own but also the faces of
the dead. They tattooed the corpse and adorned it with feathers and other
trinkets; if the person died in war, a chief delivered an address over the
body, around which were assembled the friends and kin of the dead, who
were urged by the orator to hasten to avenge the death. The Neutrals
figuratively resurrected the dead, especially great chieftains and persons
noted for valor and wisdom, by the substitution of some person who they
thought was like the deceased in person, age, and character. The selection
was made in council, by the clan of the deceased person; then all the
people except the one chosen arose, and the master of ceremonies, gently
lowering his hand to the earth, feigned to raise the illustrious dead from
the tomb and to give life to hint in the person of the chosen one, on whom
he then imposed the name and dignity of the dead chieftain, and the newly
made chieftain then arose amid the ceremonial acclaim of the people.
In 1643 the Neutrals sent an expedition of 2,000
warriors against the " Nation du fell," some of whom they attacked in a
palisaded village defended by 900 men, who bravely withstood the first
assaults; but after a siege of 10 days the Neutrals carried the palisade
and killed on the spot many of its defenders and took about 800 captives.
After burning 70 of the best warriors of the Nation du feu, they put out
the eyes and girdled the months of the old men, whom they afterward
abandoned to starve (Jes. Rel. 1643-44). The same authority also says that
the Nation du feu alone was more populous than all the Neutral nation, all
the Hurons, and all the Iroquois, showing that the term had not yet become
restricted to those now called Mascoutens, or "Small Prairie people," but
included all the so-called Illinois tribes as well.
From the Journal des PP. Jesuites for 1652-53 it is
learned that the portions of the Tobacco Nation and of the Neutral Nation
then remaining independent bodies of people were assembling with all
neighboring Algonquian tribes at A`otonatendie (Akotonatendike'?),
situated 3 days' journey southward from Skia'e (Sault Sainte Marie); that
the Tobacco Nation wintered in 1653 at Tea`onto'rai, and the Neutrals,
numbering 800, at Sken'chio`e (i. e., Fox place) in the direction of
Te`o`chanontian, probably Detroit; that these two tribes would rendezvous
in the autumn of 1653 at A`otonatendie, where they had assembled more than
2,000 warriors. This is perhaps the last historical mention of the
Neutrals as an independent body. It is these Neutrals, apparently, whom
Perrot (Mémoire, chap. xiv, 1864)
calls "Huron de la nation neutre" and "Hurons neutres."
In 1640 the Hurons offered a present of 9 hatchets
(costly articles at that time) to the chieftains of the Neutral council,
in the hope of inducing it to order the assassination of Fathers Brebeuf
and Chauutonot, but after deliberating on the proposal all night the
council refused to accept the gift.
As has been seen, Daillon said the Neutrals occupied 28
villages in 1636. In 1640 Brebeuf ascribed to them 40 villages with
a minimum population of 12,000 persons, including 4,000 warriors.
Only a few of the names of these have bee preserved, among them being:
Kandoucho or Tus Les Saints
Khioetoa or Saint Michel
Ongniaahra (Ouaroronon," probably on the site of Yongstown, N.Y.; a form
of Miagrara)
Ounontisaston
Teotongniaton or Saint Guillaume
